Samsung Research to open three new AI centres

The lab in Toronto - which will be housed in the MaRS Discovery District - is part of a new wave of centres spread across the globe.

In line with Samsung Electronics' new plans to nurture AI as its new motor of growth, the Korean electronics giant will open an AI Center in Moscow on May 29 (local time). They will join existing AI centres in Seoul, South Korea, and Silicon Valley in the USA, all dedicated to exploring the full potential of AI technology.

Across all of these centres, Samsung hopes to employ around a 1,000 AI researchers within the next two years.

The Toronto center will be headed by Larry Hack, senior vice president of Samsung Research America, while the tech behemoth will tap renowned AI experts, Dmitry Vetrov, professor at Higher School of Economics and Victor Lempitsky of Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, to lead AI projects of the Moscow research team. The AI Center in Toronto will bolster its research efforts in core AI technologies with strategic cooperation from major universities in Canada.

Kim Hyun-suk, head of Samsung Electronics' consumer electronics division, speaks at an opening event of the firm's AI center in Cambridge, the United Kingdom, on May 22 (local time). 'With the new AI Centres and recruitment of leading experts in the field, our aim is to be a game changer for the AI industry.

An official at Samsung Electronics' Russian subsidiary said the country is home to many talented academics in the fields of basic sciences and source technology, and the AI Center-Moscow will be hiring more researchers with relevant work experience to contribute to AI research in the future. These include AI that is: "user-centric", realizing personalization through a multi-modal interface; "always learning", through continuous self-learning from data; "always there", as an ambient service; "always helpful", with minimization of user intervention and response to requests; and "always safe", ensuring user safety and privacy.